Broadcast Hysteria

Orson Welle's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News

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About this listen

In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz examines the history behind the infamous radio play. Did it really spawn a wave of mass hysteria? Schwartz is the first to examine the hundreds of letters sent directly to Orson Welles after the broadcast. He draws upon them, and hundreds more sent to the FCC, to recapture the roiling emotions of a bygone era, and his findings challenge conventional wisdom. Relatively few listeners believed an actual attack was underway. But even so, Schwartz shows that Welles's broadcast prompted a different kind of "mass panic" as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country's vulnerabilities in a time of crisis.

Schwartz's original research, gifted storytelling, and thoughtful analysis make Broadcast Hysteria a groundbreaking work of media history.

A. Brad SchwartzSean RunnetteHighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books

Americas

Entertainment & Performing Arts

United States

Entertainment

War

Americas Entertainment & Performing Arts United States Entertainment War

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This is a book based on one small episode in history. It is stretched to be an entire book. That to one side, it a welcome reappraisal of the infamous Martian Invasion episode using foresnsic detail to demonstrate you can't always belive what the media are saying about the media.

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